Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 441 Backing up the bank notes

It is no wonder that Du Shouchang was excited. The salt industry system of the Ming Dynasty insisted on the monopoly of salt.

All the saltworks were under the control of the government, and the government set up officials in the saltworks. The management method was similar to that of the weaving bureau and the military battle bureau.

As for the salt households, according to the tax system of the Ming Dynasty, the tax they paid was salt, which was called the salt tax. After paying the salt tax prescribed by the government, the excess salt was called surplus salt, and these surplus salt were not allowed to be sold privately. , the government-owned saltworks will uniformly purchase at a low price.

Salt households have to pay a lot of salt taxes, and there is not much surplus salt, which is barely enough to make ends meet. A very small number of well-managed officials can buy off the guards, hire people to cook a large amount of salt, and secretly sell surplus salt. Handing it over to the salt farm, like Bian Rang's family in Haizhou, is a large salt household, and to a certain extent can negotiate with salt merchants.

But in general, in the salt industry, the government and the salt merchants have the final say, and it is a salt industry system in which the government supervises the merchants.

The specific system is called "Gang Salt System". The Ming Dynasty divided the merchants who held the salt into ten classes according to the region. It is called "woben", and obtaining salt quotations is called Zhanwo, and it is necessary to pay a huge salt tax to the government at one time to obtain these salt quotations.

However, to receive Yanyin, you must rely on Yinwo (also known as Wogen, Genwo), which is a certificate that proves that you have the privilege of transporting and selling salt.In order to obtain this privilege, salt merchants must admit their nests to the competent government departments.When admitting a nest, in addition to proving one's own financial resources, one also needs to have strong connections and contacts, and to pay a huge amount of silver.But the salt merchants who hold the Yinwo have the hereditary privilege of transporting and selling salt.

As a result, a large amount of salt was divided up by a small number of large salt merchants. They used a lot of money and relationships to monopolize the salt merchants, but they could not buy salt from the salt merchants, they could not buy salt from the government salt farms, and they had no right to operate the salt industry. Therefore, it is necessary to buy salt from the big salt merchants at a high price, and the big salt merchants assign the salt merchants to small and medium-sized salt merchants for operation. They don't have to take any risks at all, and they just collect profits every year, so they can be so fat and become the first-class merchants in the Ming Dynasty. help.

It seems that buying salt is like buying invoices in later generations. The difference is that the government of later generations adopted an extremely strict auditing system to supervise enterprises in order to pay taxes according to regulations. Do not pay a large amount of salt tax to the government in order to obtain the certificate of salt quotation.

But if this system works well, that’s all. After the mid-Ming Dynasty, the official class became depraved and corrupt. They even dared to play around with such things as casting money, let alone such things as Yanyin. Therefore, a large number of surplus salt households colluded with the salt government. Officials sell a lot of private salt, so the salt introduction system is basically broken, and now, the city of Beijing is occupied, and the imperial court is shivering in Fujian, who cares about it.

That's why Yangzhou merchants have crossed the border. To be honest, the current salt industry has basically become the world of private salt.

That's why Huai'an salt merchants wanted to squeeze Yangzhou merchants out of Huai'an through the government, instead of monopolizing the salt in Huai'an salt farms by relying on salt.

Originally, salt production and salt sales were strictly divided into areas according to the outline of salt production. The two Huaihe Rivers were bounded by the Huaihe River. , the same area of ​​Huai'an salt merchants is in Haizhou, Huaibei.

In history, Yangzhou salt merchants were the only one, but in the Ming Dynasty, because the Yellow River seized the Huaihe River into the sea, a large amount of sediment pushed the coastline of Huainan to the depths of the sea, resulting in a decrease in the salinity of the seawater, while the salinity of Huaibei is relatively high, and the geographical location is also different. What's more, it has developed into a business pattern of "salt frying in Huainan, salt drying in Huaibei".

Salt fields in Huaibei generally adopt the sun-dried salt method, while Huainan continues to use the boiled salt method. Since it is a salt monopoly, Yangzhou salt merchants don’t care about the cost. Anyway, it is the salt households who suffer. However, after the country’s ruined salt administration and corruption, Haizhou The advantage of sun-drying salt is reflected. Huai'an salt merchants have come from behind. Although they have not surpassed Yangzhou salt merchants, they can already fight against each other.

Therefore, when Huai'an was controlled by the Qing army and Haizhou was controlled by Yang Chao, a large number of Yangzhou salt merchants went northward, colluded with local salt farms and salt households, and swallowed a large part of the territory of Huai'an salt merchants.

Therefore, Du Shouchang is more eager than Yangzhou salt merchants to get the support of the government, and hopes to restore the key salt system, but Yang Chao is not willing to return to the era of government-run salt industry. The common people were reduced to treating salt as a luxury. How could Yang Chao allow him to continue to exist in such absurd things.

Therefore, it is impossible for Yang Chao to agree to Du Shouchang, but he promised that Huai'an salt merchants can open their own salt farms, and there is no limit to the number of quotations. This is equivalent to allowing them to directly participate in all aspects of the salt industry. How can Du Shouchang not be excited.

So he immediately sided with Yang Chao, and started to go back to organize Huai'an salt merchants to cooperate with Yang Chao.

Salt merchants are giants in the money pawn shop industry, and they can completely compete with the powers of the wealthy and honorable. They also have a large amount of copper coins in their hands. Now the salt merchants who want to operate the salt industry will release them at any cost. Two days later, the price of silver was raised to the price of eight hundred copper coins.

At this time, Yangzhou salt merchants also approached Yang Chao. They wantonly swallowed up the territory of Huai'an salt merchants in Haizhou, and stabilized their own Huainan territory. Yang Chao agreed to run the saltworks by himself, which immediately made them restless.

Seeing that Huai'an salt merchants helped Yang Chao to suppress the price of copper coins, they immediately did not dare to wait and see, and sent Qiao Chengwang as a representative to communicate with Yang Chao, and they also hoped to get permission to independently operate the salt industry.

"It's still the old way, selling copper coins and absorbing silver. In addition, Benjue has issued a large number of silver notes, which also needs your support. How about this, in addition to paying 10 taels of gold, I will send you salt stickers and allow you to do it. Outside the salt field. You must also deposit 10 taels of silver in my bank, and I will give you 10 taels of silver notes, which can be exchanged for silver in various places in the south of the Yangtze River, and the full payment is guaranteed."

"Of course we don't worry about Uncle's banknote!"

Qiao Chengwang agreed without the slightest hesitation. They were really assured of Yang Chao's banknotes. After all, when they marched towards Haizhou, there was chaos everywhere, and no one dared to take the money on the road with confidence. Bank exchange is already used.

"However, this time, the main purpose is not to exchange your banknotes, but to let you release these small-value banknotes through your own bank, pawnshop, silver bank, or even salt shop, and put them in the hands of ordinary people. Remember Now, this is a major matter of this lord, if you do well, this lord will be able to take care of your business, right?"

"Yes Yes."

Qiao Chengwang didn't dare to object, Yang Chao was waging a war, so they were waging a war, a salt war with Huai'an salt merchants, the key to success or failure was whether they could get Yang Chao's salt stickers.

The word paste means a pass, a license, or a franchise for Westerners. There were rules in the Ming Dynasty. For example, dental shops have dental stickers, which are licenses issued by the government to conduct intermediary business. With dental stickers, we can introduce transactions for buyers and sellers in the market, evaluate product quality, and collect commissions on prices.

To obtain dental stickers, you need to pay dental tax, which is divided into upper, middle and lower. The dental tax varies from place to place. For taxes, two taels of silver are paid, for middle ones one tael, and for low ones five qian; for the rest of the remote villages and towns, one tael of silver is paid for top, five qian for middle, and three qian for low.

The dental tax in Nanjing is higher, but the upper dental tax is only five taels of silver a year, the middle one is three taels, and the lower one is two taels of silver.

Yang Chao's salt stickers are obviously much more expensive than dental stickers. A piece of salt stickers is 10 taels of silver, but there are still eight shops in Huai'an that buy salt stickers, and ten shops in Yangzhou.

It means that the salt merchants in Huaian sold 800 million copper coins, and the salt merchants in Yangzhou directly threw 1000 million copper coins on the market.

The small-value banknotes quickly reached the common people through the salt merchants' network. In order to let the small-value banknotes in their hands be sold this morning, the Yangzhou salt merchants even took advantage of the temporary monopoly advantage and told the common people that their shops only accept cash. Tickets, if you want to eat salt, then go to exchange for silver tickets, where can you change them?The money houses, pawnshops and silver numbers they run can be exchanged.

In ten days, the 1000 million silver notes were exchanged.

But the common people are still very worried about these banknotes. They try to exchange only enough banknotes to sell salt, and don't let the banknotes stay in their hands. In a blink of an eye, these banknotes are back in the hands of the salt merchants. This is not what Yang Chao wants. As he saw, he hoped that the common people would hold these banknotes and use them as currency.

"Listen everyone, it's very good that your salt merchants only accept silver notes. From today onwards, you will no longer accept copper coins. Only silver and silver notes will be accepted. Don't worry, the silver notes in your hands will be exactly the same I will pay you in cash. And I will give you a discount, I will only charge two cents for your exchange fee!"

Merchants in Yangzhou were used to foreign exchange before, but Yang Chao wanted to charge an additional three-point interest. 100 taels of silver is three taels of interest, which is much higher than the handling fee of later generations, but it is equivalent to the risk of transporting silver on the road. It's worth it, but it still hurts a lot of people, because operating the salt industry is a large-scale business, and the circulating funds are easily millions of taels, and the exchange interest paid out every year is tens of thousands of taels, which is still very distressing.

In particular, many salt merchants gave out six cents of interest every time they exchanged back and forth, which was even more heartbreaking. This reduced them by one-third all at once, which was still very cost-effective.

And they had to agree if they agreed, or if they didn't agree, they were tied to Yang Chao now. It could be said that as long as Yang Chao's army was still in Haizhou, they would have to accept Yang Chao's exploitation.

"Besides, the lord has decided that all your salt stickers in the future will be paid with bank notes, and you will not be charged a penny in cash. This way you don't have to worry about your bank notes getting rotten in your hands."

"At the same time, the Lord also decided that in the future, the imperial court will collect all taxes through silver bills, one tael of silver bills is one tael of silver, and the copper coins are at least in Nanzhili, and the government will not recognize them in the future."

Bank notes can be used to pay taxes, which means that the government directly admits that the gold content of the bank notes is the face value of silver, which is equivalent to injecting government credit into the bank notes. Zhili is different, Yang Chao has always kept his word, and the Nanzhi government is still very trustworthy in the hearts of the people.

On the same day, Yang Chao posted notices throughout Nanzhi, informing the people that the copper coins in his hand could no longer be used to pay taxes, nor could they be used to buy salt, nor could they be used to buy grain in the Changping warehouse of the government. The government only recognizes bank notes.

(End of this chapter)